500 years: the strategies used by Hernán Cortés to seize the great Tenochtitlan

Although this is a widely held belief, There were 800 Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes who alone defeated the mighty military force Mexico of Tenochtitlan; next to him were thousands upon thousands of natives who allied with the Hispanics in the hope of getting rid of the Aztecs. This led to a clash between two gigantic armies that resulted in the defeat of an empire, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma explained during his participation in the lecture series.

When Cortés besieges the Mexican towns of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, he implements a plan to try to defeat native resistance. The Spanish captain tells us in his third letter of relationship, sent to the King of Spain, that One of the strategies he used was to cut off the drinking water which reached Tenochtitlan by the aqueduct which brought it from Chapultepec.: “What was to remove the fresh water that entered the city, which was a very big ruse” (Cortés, nd, pp. 325-326).

For the attack, he divided his forces into three large groups and prepared the bricks to destroy these cities. As we remember, Tenochtitlan was in the middle of Lake Texcoco and joined the mainland by large causeways like those of Tacuba, to the west, that of Tepeyac, in the north, and Iztapalapa in the south, in addition to the thousands of canoes which transported people and products between the two lake towns and the mainland.

Cortés sends Pedro de Alvarado to the town of Tacuba with “thirty horsemen, and eighteen crossbowmen and marksmen, and one hundred and fifty pawns of sword and shield, and more than twenty-five thousand men of war of Tascaltécal”.

Cristóbal de Olid is located in Coyoacán with “thirty-three horses, and eighteen crossbowmen and marksmen, and one hundred and sixty pawns of sword and shield, and more than twenty thousand soldiers of our friends …”.

Gonzalo de Sandoval occupies Iztapalapa with “twenty-four horsemen, and four marksmen and thirteen crossbowmen, and a hundred and fifty pawns of sword and shield; About fifty of them, chosen young people, whom I brought in my company, and all the inhabitants of Guajucingo [Huejotzingo] and Churtèque [Cholula] and Calco [Chalco], that there were more than thirty thousand men ”(Cortés, nd, pp. 323-324).

For his part, Bernal Díaz points to more or less similar figures, even if he says that the number of natives accompanying each army corps was eight thousand men (Díaz del Castillo, 1943, pp. 106-107). For his part, Cortés takes command of the 13 bricks, counting for that with 300 men, “All the most seafaring and well qualified; so that in each brig there were twenty-five Spaniards, and each whip carried its captain and overseer and six crossbowmen and shooters” (Cortéz, nd, p. 324).

As Matos Moctezuma points out, about 800 Spaniards and about 75,000 native enemies of Tenochtitlan led the conquest. Indigenous chronicles such as the Récit de la Conquête, written in 1528 by an anonymous native of Tlatelolco, relate the last clashes between the two camps. Thus, we read passages like this one which marks the end of the contest:

Almost 500 years have passed since that clash and its echoes still resonate everywhere, such as at the entrance to the Templo Mayor museum, where a poem from Mexican Songs asks one of its fragments: “Who will be able to besiege Tenochtitlán? Who can shake the foundations of heaven? However, time has shown that even these foundations can be shaken and that, which gave the Aztec capital its reputation as an impregnable one, brought it down.

“Making Tenochtitlán a lakeside town and having Tlatelolco next to it seemed like an excellent defense strategy as no indigenous people were able to cope with the large fleet of canoes guarding the area., but Cortés devised a strategy that would defeat the Aztecs: he took control of the water ”.

For Dr Matos, we must recognize the boldness of the Spaniards and their ability to venture into improbable undertakings, such as moving the rigging of ships stranded in Tlaxcala in order, once there, to take advantage of the wrecks and build 13 bricks who would later be taken to Lake Texcoco. It was these vessels with their crossbows, cannons and arquebuses that made it possible to besiege a city that was believed to be impossible to besiege.

“The control of the lake allowed them to face the Mexican canoes that came by the thousands to defend the city, as well as to prevent the arrival of supplies. Part of Cortés’ ruse was to cut off Chapultepec’s drinking water supply and to post fractions of his army on the roads to prevent any supply of land. Although the other key factor in establishing this siege was that the Spaniards knew how to take advantage of the enmity of many indigenous peoples towards the Aztecs and their domination ”.

Energy saving

According to Professor Matos Moctezuma, Tenochca’s two pillars of power were war and agriculture, and this is evident in the Templo Mayor, where one part is dedicated to Tlaloc, the god who brings rain, and the other to Huitzilopochtli, the deity who leads the war.

“There was also trade, but it was not that important as it was limited to the exchange of products; however, military expansion and the subjugation of other peoples brought them a wealth which seemed to flow endlessly, due to the collection of tributes ”.

From the tropics they got jaguar skins, feathers and exotic animals; from Hidalgo large shipments of lime, and green stones from Guerrero, corn and beans, To name a few examples, and communities that refused to pay were plundered, their children and wives kidnapped and their properties razed, so that thousands of natives generated genuine hatred towards Mexicans and saw the Spaniards. as a hope to end the Aztec yoke.

Elena Garro’s most famous story is called “La culpa es de los tlaxcalacas” (1964) and explores, through magical realism, this idea so deeply rooted today among Mexicans that members of this community were a herd of traitors who brought down Tenochtitlán, but why would they be ?, asked Matos Moctezuma.

“I always suspected that the Tenochcas didn’t conquer Tlaxcala just to overwhelm its inhabitants with flower wars, so why call them traitors? Calling them that they should have conspired against their people and that they were not Mexicans, and the same goes for Malinche, who was from an area of ​​Tabasco threatened by the Aztecs.. In addition, it was not only the Tlaxcalans, among the allies of Cortés there were Huejotzincas, Texcocanos and many etcetera ”.

The city of Tenochtitlán surrenders on Saturday August 13, 1521, when Cuauhtémoc was captured by Francisco García Holguín and presented to Cortés. “This was the inevitable result of two different ways of conceiving war,” explained Dr Matos.

Initially, it was a clash between Mexican battalions armed with macuahuitls (pieces of wood edged with obsidian), slings, spear throwers, clubs and stone clubs, against an equipped Spanish army. of swords, spears, arquebuses, crossbows and cannons. However, this precarious balance would be upset in terms of ways of fighting, for while the Aztecs captured enemies to sacrifice them to their god, the Europeans ruthlessly liquidated.

“This gives rise to a very interesting scene as Cuauhtémoc is brought in front of the Spanish captain and surrendered, saying: ‘Sir, I have already done what I have to do to defend my house and I cannot. more. I come by force and a prisoner in front of your person and your power. Take that knife out of your belt and kill me with it. Instead, Hernán Cortés would come up, give him a hug and spare his life, ”or at least that’s what the chronicles mistakenly record.

And it is that, according to Matos, here the words were disturbed to the point of being unrecognizable because they were expressed in Nahuatl by the young Tlatoani, translated into Mayan by Malinche and later into Spanish by Gerónimo de Aguilar, who interpreted as “take that dagger and kill me”, which really should have been “sacrifice myself to my god and let me go through my warrior cycle”.

By not granting him this, he made him a victim of the greatest cruelty in the eyes of the Mexicans: not only did he see his city destroyed (the one that would only fall if the foundations of heaven were shaken), but he was stripped of his right to accompany Huitzilopochtli on his walk in heaven.

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